“Something’s Not Right”: Unforgettable Stories of People Avoiding Close Shaves By Their Gut Feeling

My sister since she was about 5 was always obsessed with tsunamis and would always ask my dad every night before she went to sleep if there would be a tsunami that night (we lived on a beach).

About 5 years later when our family was holidaying in Samoa an earthquake struck at about 6am. It was only a dull low rumble but went on for over a minute. Everyone at the resort woke up and went outside for a few minutes then went back to bed.

I went to hospital with shortness of breath and my heart racing. They did a chest x-ray, blood test for blood clots, ECG, and a few other tests but all came back normal. 

After observing me overnight everything still looked good, oxygen saturation was perfect, my heart rate was still a bit elevated but nothing too crazy, and it seemed that it was likely leftover symptoms from a bad virus that I'd had a week or so earlier. 

The ER doctor asks me how I would feel if they sent me home and I just had a bad feeling about it all. I told him as such and that I had no real basis for it except that I just felt off about it.

Back in 2011, My dad and I were driving down the country for New Year’s Eve. Suddenly he goes quiet, kind of starts breathing slowly and steady, and tells me to look up the road. 

He was so calm and focused. I look up and see a car spinning in the middle of the freeway ramping up speed and knocking cars off the road. 

This is Scandinavia, winter, pretty much on ice. I imagine the driver of that car hoping, just hoping. 

So my dad proceeds to accelerate towards the guy spinning, which didn’t even occur to me was weird. 

Last year, December 1st. I had slept for almost a week trying to fight what I thought was the flu. I woke up and that exact gut feeling kept on telling me something’s not right with me. Called the parents to tell them and then cabbed myself to the emergency room. 

Took blood, the whole 9 yards; was there for 8 hours. Discharged and sent home. Called the next morning asking me to come back because they found something in my blood. Bacteremia and Endocarditis. I was put on penicillin immediately, for 2 months. 

More tests, more things wrong. I went for a specialized test on December 21st, and woke up to them telling me I need surgery as soon as possible. 

They’re trying to find a surgical team, the earliest is the 24th. I go in and while they’re operating I have an ascending aortic aneurysm and it caused an aortic dissection. They’re able to fix it. I’ve got a synthetic valve in there now.

There's a very fun road that gets you from Niederndorf to Vach (or back) in Germany. You can go 60 or 70 ~~clicks~~ kph along smooth tight turns and little rolling hills. All around it for acres and acres are fields of whatever's in season and no intersections for several kilometers. It's a very fun road to go too fast on. 

This day, something like wheat was in and it was high. I couldn't see around the corners, but I knew the road well and was staying in my lane. And I was going fast, and smiling.

About half way in, I heard a voice in my head as clear as if the speaker were sitting next to me and it said, "You need to slow down." It was startling and I braked immediately.

Once I was at the bank doing business with the ATM. I noticed a black and yellow van parked with a man in the driver's seat. The van was off, and he was just sitting there. Made me uncomfortable, so I didn't want to go home. 

Instead, I got in my car and moved to the other side of the parking lot near a hardware store and outdoor recycling center (it was broad daylight). I just sat in my car pretending to read, and the van started up and moved down to my side of the parking lot. 

Again, he reversed the van into a parking spot that was facing my car. Now I knew that I shouldn't go home (which was nearby), so instead, I got out and went to visit the two men who were manning the recycling center.

I was with a coworker. He had lied to me about going to a family party of his. But when I showed up, it was just him and I and we went to a bar. I rolled my eyes and just thought I could clench my teeth through it. 

He knew the owner of the bar. And got me alcoholic drinks (I was only 20). I started pouring out the drinks when the dude was shooting pool because I didn't want to be tipsy/drunk while dealing with him (that decision honestly saved me).

I told him I wanted to go home, but he talked me into taking him home first. So I followed the directions he gave me and I pulled into a hookah bar parking lot instead. He started getting really aggressive and trying to kiss me.

I was offered a dream job at almost double my salary in a different city. It was only 2 hours away, but something told me not to take the job. I had a number of people tell me I would never have another opportunity like this, and my fear of leaving my hometown was holding me back. 

I'd already been working within this division for 7 years. I was offered 2 internal positions at the same time with my employer, one with a huge salary bump out-of-town as a trainer, and one at the same salary in-town doing casework in a completely new department. 

It was either change locations or change departments, so I listened to my gut and chose the lower-paying job in a new department and called myself a failure for not taking a risk.  

2 months after I turned it down, that division of the company was sold, and everyone in that department lost their job. I’d have been stuck in a new city with no friends or family nearby, and no job prospects.

About 10 years ago, working security at a site about 50 miles from home, got off shift at midnight, and didn't bother to change out of uniform because I was only going to stop for gas. Two stations in the town I was working in were open after midnight, but it slipped my mind as I drove past the first one. 

Pulled into the other, (same brand, same gas price, same sort of dump entirely) and just didn't like something about it. Nobody else was around but the clerk that I could see, but I decided to go back to the other one.

I normally go to the club with my husband. He was out of town but I had friends that said they'd be out. My club has always been a very safe club but the area it's in has had its ups and downs, (because drinking and a bunch of clubs in a small area comes with drunks and ne'er do wells of all kinds) Since I was alone I chose my parking spot carefully. 

The usual spot was a few blocks off and that was farther than I was comfortable. The paid parking lot was open but they crammed so many cars that getting in and out could be difficult and that just made me uncomfortable for some reason. 

I chose street parking two blocks down. 

The block itself was dark but the next block up was very brightly lit thanks to a big name hotel. Basically I had a semi dark block, a very well lit block (with the paid parking lot and parking lot attendant across from it) and then I was at my club. 

Straight shot. My car and the club were in eye sight of each other if one stood at the corner and leaned over enough.

The moment I got into the club I knew something was wrong but I couldn't put my finger on it. None of my friends showed up so I'm alone. Normally this isn't an issue, but the vibe was seriously off. 

Without going into too long of a story with details, some dude kept trying to buy me a drink that I kept turning down, partly because I don't accept drinks from strangers and partly because this dude didn't seem to be flirting with me and so I couldn't understand why he was so insistent on getting me a drink. 

I lied and said I was on medication but he kept insisting so I agreed to water (because it comes in a sealed water bottle). Dude comes back with the type of glass that mixed drinks usually come in. 

The moment he gives it to me he leaves and I don't see him again for the rest of the night. The "water" went straight down the bathroom sink and I started looking for someone to walk me out because my alarm bells are going off.

My mother saved my grandfather's life when he had a stroke in his chair in their living room.

We had all started to walk around the development, when my mother, after about 50-75 meters from the house said, "I am going to go back and check on Dad." I went with her, and I nearly witnessed my grandfather die.  

He was on the chair, conscious, but unable to move or talk... Just looking at my mother with bulging eyes. She called 911 once, then twice when she felt that they were running late. Ambulance came, got him on the stretcher, but it was too wide to fit out the door. We ended up tearing the door frame off to get him out.

My aunt told me a story about my dad, who greatly dislikes his sister and is an all around deadbeat 98% of the time, calling her out of the blue one night while she was in college. 

She answered, he said he didn't know why but he had this urge to call her, to make sure she was okay. She told him she was fine and thanked him for calling to check on her.

A few years ago, when I was 19 and studying abroad in Europe, my friend and I decided to go to Turkey. It was our first time really traveling on our own without a group and we decided to walk around the square outside of the Blue Mosque. 

We felt very safe during the day and decided to see the city at night with the lights. As we were in the square, we were hounded by typical store owner's trying to sell us something. Finally, most went away and as we were going back to our hotel, a younger guy approached us. 

He said he had a shop on the corner, which he pointed to with lots of souvenirs including carpets. I grew up with a lot of handmade, woven carpets from my parents travels to the middle east and Asia. I decided it would be a nice gift. 

So we followed him, and when we got to what we thought was his shop, we stopped. 

We started to walk in and he said not that one, the one around the corner. We poke our head around and sure enough see a store, only selling carpets. I started to get a slightly strange feeling but nothing overwhelming, so we followed him as we could see the store. 

When we walked in, about 13-15 other men were in the shop. They were pointing out carpets and showing us around and I started to get really uncomfortable. My friend seemed completely at ease, so we followed the group around the bend to the other part of the store. 

In Turkey, it is common to be offered tea, so that part is not particularly odd, but the men, who were now circling us, were insistent that we have tea with them in the basement. I kept saying no but they were leading us towards steps, completely surrounding us.

I was in the Amazon at the end of a 3 month solo trip around Latin America. I wanted to enjoy one last walk through the jungle before leaving so I left my jungle lodge around 8am to walk down to a small river nearby. 

I stop and close my eyes to listen to the sounds as the jungle is super loud with crickets, birds, insects etc. Almost immediately I got a weird feeling and felt really uncomfortable - which was weird because up until then I'd only felt peaceful and happy.

When I was young (around 8 or 9 probably), I lived 3 blocks from a convenience store. It was the early 90s. My best friend and I convinced our parents to let us walk to the store alone to get some snacks. 

Important to add that the two blocks closest to the store are connected but the 3rd block we lived on was its own unconnected neighborhood. 

So anyway, as we are walking back from the store, we are coming up to the first street and a truck drives by and stops on the side of the road in between the first and second block on our side of the road. 

I stopped and told my friend that we should go down the first street and go through the neighborhood, come back out the second street and then head to our 3rd street to avoid the truck. 

She thought I was being stupid but I refused to keep walking on the main street so she followed me down the first road. We are now in the first neighborhood and about halfway between the first and second street when we see the truck slowly driving down the second street into the neighborhood.

A big group of friends and I were walking home from an event in a town we weren't used to. It was night, and hardly anyone was around – empty streets and all that. We were walking down a sidewalk that had high fences next to it, so when you turned a corner, whatever was around it was out of sight.  

One of the girls fell behind (distracted by her phone, I think), and I noticed, so I started drifting behind as well to become a sort of midway point between her in the group. 

Soon, we were nearing where we were staying, and our group rounded a corner, then started making their way into the yard where our living quarters were. I saw a car drive past us, then turn the corner down the street the girl was still on.

As soon as I saw it, I suddenly got this suspicious, awful feeling, so I stopped, and went back to the corner to keep an eye on the friend.

The car drove past her, stopped, did a complete u-turn, and slowly started creeping up behind/alongside her. She was still on her phone, and wasn't noticing a thing.

I was hanging out with friends at a bar but then going to head to my friend’s to stay the night. We drove separately though. It was in a city with a super high crime rate and in an even rougher part of town. 

We left the bar at like 3am and the drive wasn’t far, but I was really low on gas and wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. 

I’m not normally a person who’s paranoid over city/neighborhood crime rates and I spent like half my time in this city and in the area we were in anyway, so it wasn’t foreign to me by any means. 

Even so, just to be on the safe side, I picked a gas station that was well lit and at a relatively busy intersection. I was the only car at the gas station and when I pulled up to the pump I luckily took a moment to text my friend that I’d catch up with him in a few minutes.

As I’m doing that, though, another car pulls up right on the other side of the pump that I was at. I have no idea what made me pause, but I just waited a second to let them get out first. But I had to keep waiting, because they weren’t getting out.

My boyfriend and I were visiting friends for a week in Phoenix. We girls were lounging at the pool while the guys were flexing their grilling skills. My boyfriend paused for a moment, stood very still then told me to go get dressed, we had to go. Right now. I wanted to fuss but something told me not to. 

We drove straight through to San Antonio right to his parents' very rural house. (before cell phones and they didn’t have a landline within a half mile) Seconds before we arrived his little sister had jumped off of a rain barrel and landed on a metal spike that went straight up through her foot and into her leg. 

His dad was at work so there was no car available there. She was bleeding like crazy and his mother had just walked out and found her. I don’t know what spoke to him in Phoenix, but it would have been all bad if we had not arrived exactly when we did.

TIme passed, my boyfriend and I got an apartment together, he worked, I didn’t. Every day I packed a nice lunch for him and made a good dinner. 

One afternoon, nothing out of the ordinary, I was laying out at the complex pool and an older guy walked over to introduce himself. He wasn’t hitting on me, he had just moved into town and was new to the complex. 

We chatted for three or four minutes when my boyfriend showed up at the pool. Odd, but ok. Introductions then we returned to the apartment for lunch.

Once behind the door of the apartment he said to me; “Stay away from that guy. There is something very bad about him. He feels like the bottom of the deepest ocean.”

I saw a mannequin ominously placed by the trash in a dark alley. Almost walked away, but decided to check it out because something felt really off. Turned out to be a 15 year old girl who had OD’d.

Two friends and I were filming a music video and got back to our friend’s house around midnight. As we’re walking in his backdoor I see the “mannequin” laying by the trash can. 

I honestly thought it was a prank at first because the alley was completely dark and the “mannequin” was lying perfectly under the one light in the alley. 

I decided to check it out and my two friends came with me. As we get closer we realize that it’s a girl. We figure she’s mid twenties and probably just passed out drunk cause there’s a bunch of seedy bars in the area. 

My one friend shakes her, after a few shakes she comes to and has this absolutely wild, animal-like look in her eyes. She hops to her feet, thrashes at us a bit, before taking off down the dark alley. 

She’s understandably afraid because she just came into a dark alley with three dudes hovering over her. As she makes her way down the alley, we try to tail her while giving her space because she’s acting wild. 

I want to call the cops, my one friend wants to help her but not call the cops and get her in trouble and my third friend wants to leave her figuring she’s just drunk and headed home. While arguing about what to do/ keeping our distance so we don’t freak her out, we actually lose track of her but find her phone in the middle of the alley. 

I worked at a fast food restaurant and I got an antsy phone call from my dad telling me to come home ASAP. There were storms on the way and he was nervous about the timing. I thought he was being paranoid until I got this really uneasy feeling as well. Every nerve in my body was telling me to get home right now. 

I made the manager man when I left without mopping the floors. I rushed home and I had barely gotten into the door for two minutes before a tornado hit our house.

When I was 18 in my first year of college, I was walking into a convenience store and two girls popped out of a car to ask me to buy them cigarettes because they said they were 17 (needed to be 18). 

I said sure, took their money and order, and as I was walking in, a bald 40-something guy wearing a button down shirt walked out. 

I immediately thought that guy's a cop. I bought for me and the girls, and asked the clerk straight up if that guy was a cop. Clerk confirmed it for me. 

So I walked out, told the girls to meet me across the street, and walked back to my dorm.

A little over a year ago I matched with this guy on Tinder. He was a great looking guy. We chatted for a couple weeks and I couldn't put my finger on it but something just didn't feel right so I just stopped texting one day. 

A couple weeks went by and he messaged me to say hi. I ended up looking through the previous messages to try to remember why I stopped texting. I couldn't pinpoint a single reason. He seemed fine. I thought maybe I was just having a bad day. So I asked him out. We went out a couple of nights later. 

I didn't really find a connection with him in person. He seemed like a nice guy and all and he was as good looking in person as he is in pictures. But he just jibber-jabber about topics instead of trying to have a meaningful conversation. Annoying and not my thing but harmless. 

So we got to the end of the date and I decided to get coffee at his place. No future for a relationship, but maybe he's good in bed, y'know? We were making out on the couch a bit and suddenly that feeling hit me again. 

He was on top of me, but not even pressing down on me that hard, but for some reason it just felt so oppressive and scary. I told him I needed to get home and left. He was definitely annoyed but let me leave without a fight. 

My wife and I had an apartment in a really sketchy area of a city we used to live in. One day, we were walking home and could hear people yelling and a general commotion from a house about a block ahead of us. Nothing out of the ordinary for this area though.

For whatever reason, something didn't feel right to me. I put my hand down low and whispered to my wife "Give me your phone, give me your phone" (this was before everyone had a phone, only my wife had a cell between us). 

I dialed 9-1-1 as soon as she handed me the phone. Within 2 seconds after I dialed, a guy burst out of a car parked in front and ran at the house with 2 giant butcher knives screaming "I'm gonna freaking kill everyone!"

My husband and I were on our annual Christmas through NYE camping trip (Australia in case you’re wondering why anyone would choose to freeze their asses off at that time of year. It’s 35 Celsius here).

We planned to stay at this fair remote National Park campground we’d stayed at a few years previous in a place called Wadbilliga National Park. We arrived at about 4pm, set up camp, had a quick swim, made dinner, washed up and went to bed. 

However, we couldn't sleep. We were both really genuinely afraid. We didn’t know what... It's a really isolated area and we had planned not to pass 3 other vehicles on what would have been an hour’s worth of 4x4 tracks. We couldn’t put our finger on it. Did we suspect those people in those 3 vehicles of being a danger to us? No, but we were still afraid to go to sleep.

Finally at around 11;30pm after hours of to-and-fro, we packed up everything in the pitch dark and drove 25 kms out of the National Park onto private farm land where we took a risk and set up our tent and got a few precious hours of shut eye. 

I came back to work after a week off for Christmas vacation and immediately noticed something was off with my friend. I had no clue what it was but I just knew something was wrong with him but I couldn't explain what it was. I kept asking him if he was alright but he kept saying everything was fine.

On the second day he came up to me and asked me how to do something that I knew he knew how to do. I had trained him on how to do it. I became very concerned at this point. The 3rd day was new year’s eve so we only had a half day and he was working on a spreadsheet. 

End of the day came around and I took one look at it and I could have printed it out and called it modern art, that's how horrifying it looked. I called the boss over and he pulled him off of it which caused my friend to break down and start crying because he couldn't understand that he had done anything wrong. 

I was moving to a new place over our day and a half off so I simply told him that something was wrong with him and he needed to get some help. 

When I was 19, I was walking home at midnight from a tram stop and I got the feeling I should pretend I was on the phone. A minute after doing so a car pulls up next to me on the empty road. 

It's four guys all leering at me, the one in the passenger side starts saying things like, "how about we take you for a good time" and his tone is predatory. 

I try to keep it cool because I didn't want to look frightened to encourage them that I am prey and start telling my 'friend' there's a group of guys in a car attacking me and describing the car. I heard the driver say to his mate about my conversation on the phone and then they took off.

About 15 years ago I left work early, like really early, for no real reason. I got home and all these kids were standing near my door (apartment complex next to a pond) and they were all staring at me and not saying anything. 

I went inside and dropped my bag and it wouldn't stop weighing on me how weird it was so I went back outside. I spoke to them asking what was going on and one kid meekly asked if I could help his friend. A kid I didn't see was sitting on a curb surrounded by all the rest. They had all jumped the fence next to the pond, except he slipped and impaled the flesh of his inner thigh and got stuck, the kids helped pick him up off of it, but he was just sitting there bleeding everywhere with a bunch of meat hanging out. 

I got him treated by an ambulance on the way. He came back a few weeks later with his family to thank me, and said I saved his leg.    

Before my husband and I were married with good jobs we were young and poor and didn’t care where we lived.. we rented out a sketchy little house behind the landlord's house that was clearly a shed poorly transformed into a small studio space. 

At the time I worked late nights and my husband worked mornings so I would sleep till around 12 and work all night. The landlord, Greg, was this bald old man with a heavy Russian accent. He was kind of odd but seemed nice. So was his wife. 

He’d made odd comments and invited me into his house to FaceTime (at the time it was a different program I can’t remember what the OG online face chat was) with his friends in Russia. 

One time I complained that the chipmunks were crawling into the roof, asked to patch it up better and he said “Baah no need, I take care” and I swear to God he would snatch them up with his bare hands and break their necks. I wish I was making that up. Weird, he made me feel uneasy but seemed kind to us. 

When we first moved in, I kept waking up feeling uneasy when I should’ve been exhausted. I’d feel nervous and get up, check the doors, check closets etc. 

One week my husband went away to visit his father and I was alone and literally felt like I was constantly being watched. The bedroom window was back in the yard and it was heavily wooded, I’d hear crunching of leaves and footsteps all the time. My husband said I was being paranoid because I was alone and I thought so too.

I used to work in a big city as a medical emergency responder/dispatcher. One night I arrived for my shift and like one hour later I got this call. A man calling for his wife who was choking on food, and who suddenly started to "feel better" whilst the call, which made him change his mind and say he didn't need an ambulance anymore. 

I could've stopped the call there, canceled or ranked it as a low priority. But I had this feeling, and when the man asked me if I wanted to speak to her I said yes.

"Ma'am this is the emergency services, are you sure that you don't need help of any kind? "

No answer.

"Would you need the services of the police?"

"Maybe."

My father started publicly dating a woman shortly after my mother died (I later learned she's likely the woman he'd been having an affair with before she died). I liked her. 

One evening my father took me to one side and asked how I'd feel about him asking her to marry him. I got an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach and felt nauseated. 

I told my father I didn't want him to and he asked why as he thought I liked her. I explained that I did like her but had a bad feeling and he said "That's just a feeling, they don't mean anything". 

He already had the ring and proposed straight away. I got really excited about the engagement, the wedding, moving house, and my impending little sister.

The first friend that reached out to me in high school invited me to a sleepover that became a weekly occurrence.

I met her stepdad, and instantly my stomach was unsettled. He was weird, tried too hard to seem cool/strong/useful, and stuck around us when we set up the sleeping bags in the living room and hung out. 

I kind of understood why he lingered the first night, but the lingering continued throughout the couple of years I stayed over. I told my mum I thought he was weird and suspicious and she told me never judge a book by its cover.

Freshman year of college, September 2012, barely a week in. My dad comes to visit me on campus unexpectedly. We text pretty frequently, but I wasn't expecting an actual in-person visit from family until a month in, since campus was an hour and a half from home. 

He seems pretty excited, and tells me that he found my high school class ring, which I thought I'd lost toward the start of the summer. 

It was a shade too large for my ring finger (which was how I lost it in the first place), so I decided to put it in my drawer for safekeeping. He stops me, though, and tells me he's taking it back with him if I don't wear it. 

It fits pretty well on my middle finger instead, so I roll with it, but something about the wording... worries me.

Bad feeling number one.

As mentioned, we texted frequently while he was working, and he was telling me all of the following week about a charity bike ride he was participating in on Friday morning. He was really excited about the whole thing, he'd been getting in shape for it and everything. 

Friday afternoon rolls around, and I text him to ask him how he did. Never get a response. Something about this... again, it worries me, but I brush it off. Maybe he was really tired, he probably fell asleep already. He'll text me tomorrow.

My dad has had health issues since 2008 when the first stroke hit. Since then he was always in and out of hospitals and it became just another thing. It happened so much that he would dismiss symptoms just so he wouldn't have to go to the hospital again. 

It became even worse when he was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney failure and had to do dialysis three times a week.

Anyway, I went to visit him about a month ago and out of the blue he kinda looks at his hand and says, "you know, my finger has been smelling funny lately." I'm all incredulous and I tell him funny smells usually means infections. 

I joke around and tell him he needs to get it looked at before they have to amputate it.

Spoiler alert: by the time he had it looked at the blood flow to the finger was compromised due to a fistula in his arm. He needed to get it amputated. 

This is where the funny feeling kicked in. My grandmother, his mom, passed away in 98' after her leg was amputated. The fact that he had to have anything amputated started making me anxious, and I dismissed it as being over dramatic.  

His surgery was the Friday before Mother's day and I went to visit him after work to see how he was feeling. He was so groggy and kept falling asleep at the table so my mom and I basically carried him to his bed. 

He's a proud man, super oldschool in a 'I'm a man, I don't need my wife and daughter helping me' kind of way but he clung to us because he just couldn't do it on his own.

When I was 13, my mom started dating a guy named...Ted. Ted was a therapist who lost custody of his own daughter a few years earlier for some unknown reason. Ted also had issues with illegal gun possession. I did not like Ted. But my mom did. 

She liked him so much, she let him behave as if he were my father. He helped me transfer schools, drove me to class every morning, and even gave me swimming lessons...and this is where the story turns. 

While teaching me how to float on my back one afternoon, Ted touched my butt. Not a supportive lift to prevent me from sinking, but a full on, jerk me by my bikini bottom, grab that exposed me underwater. It felt *wrong*, but I didn't have the words at the time to explain why. 

What also felt *wrong* was how often Ted talked about intercourse. How much he enjoyed it, how much his clients were having it, and what deviant things they were into. During these early morning car rides, Ted would also ask me sometimes how much I knew about intercourse, and where I was in my own physical development. Like I remember him asking about my periods a lot. 

I met some guys in a large game of D&D that a mutual acquaintance had invited us to. Once the campaign was over some of us started a smaller group with a good friend of mine, and another's former room mate/friend. I just thought that the former roommate was a bit of a harmless burn out, forgot names and was a tad spacey at times.  

Even caught a couple movies with him at the theater. During one such outing he got a call at the restaurant where we were having drinks at pre\-show and told someone to 'hold me until I get out of this movie'.  

He said it was his meth dealer, I laughed thinking he was cracking one of his oddball jokes. I asked the friend that introduced us and he said he knew he dabbled in illegal substances but thought he mostly just smoked or ate edibles.  

Turns out this guy was taking meth on the weekends and staying up for most of it before crashing enough to go to work on Monday mornings. I think at some point he stopped waiting for it to be the weekend.  

We had a board game/card night planned and ended up playing a really fun card game called 'Smash\-Up'. We started learning the rules while waiting for the old roommate to get over. He comes walking in and immediately I know something is very wrong. He suddenly has a very bad bleached dye job on his hair and his appearance is very rumpled and overall he looks strung out as a freak.  

A man came into the fast food restaurant where I used to work several years ago. It was just before closing, there were two of us up front, a manager a few yards away on a personal phone call, and someone in the back doing dishes. 

This man is a big, rough looking, blue collar kind of guy (this is relevant in a second). He orders a 3-piece meal, and my friend rings him up while I pack his food. My friend goes "you're total is $x.xx" and then I hear the register open and I hear the guy say "You have very soft hands, do you moisturize?". 

Instant alarm bells going off in my brain. This guy looks like a man's man, not the kind of person who would ever chat about skin care regimens. My friend is an idiot though, and starts prattling about lotions and what not. I don't do anything though - what am I going to call him out on- being too girly? 

But the next thing I hear is "oh, looks like you gave me the wrong change - you gave me a $20 and four $5s instead of a $5 and four $20's. Bam. My friend is still oblivious at this point - the guy is literally showing her the $20 and four $5's, how can she argue? 

A few years ago, I was just getting into our local arts community. There's a guy who owns a beautiful gallery space as well as the entirety of the remainder of the multiple story building. He does intricate stained glass work, and he has breathtaking glass installations in various sections of the building. The space is really dreamy.

It was my first time checking out the space and meeting him, and he waved a friend over, who happened to be a construction worker that had been helping him remodel the building. He invited his friend to give me a tour of the place.  

I was excited over the warm welcome and to check out the rest of the building, so I followed the guy without a second thought.

We walked around for maybe ten minutes when we arrived at a somewhat isolated section of the third floor where there weren't any working lights in the next room we were heading towards. The guy made a comment to me about the view from the windows being amazing.  

He waved me over and was like "come on, come check it out."

I felt really vaguely weird at the time, and I was like "No, it's cool, I'll stay out here, I don't want to trip on anything." 

I lived in the Middle East for about 9 years. One night I was out with 3 friends of mine and we were hanging out having a smoke out on the street.

Two cars pulled up and about 6-7 grown men stepped out of the car rather aggressively right in front of us. As soon as that happened one of the guys I was with very quickly took off and another guy leaned in, grabbed my shoulder and said "Your name is Ahmed and you're muslim!" 

That's when I thought to myself "Something is very wrong here."

I was buying weed in Cuba when I was sixteen. Super nice guy, one of the first people I had met in Cuba, had only been there two weeks. I asked him for weed. He was like omg I sell weed. He's like I just got to pick it up from my house. I was, “No problem, you are a friend, this isn't weird!”

So, we enter the house, but part of the sidewall is blown out into a doorway to connect all the houses on the street. I would say there are about 10. So, we are walking through these houses. It's just old cubans watching tv. 

We got to the last house. It's the only one that has a door. He tells me, "Okay, I'm just going to get the stuff. you wait here." He enters, I hear him lock the door.

I get the "Oh, I'm about to get robbed." feeling. I turn around and I see all the doorways were passing now and have doggie gates to prevent a quick get away. 

So, I bolt.

It happened when I was a teenager. Two of my cousins, my mother, and I were on the way to San Francisco. I was sitting in the backseat playing on my Nintendo DS. As my cousin was making a left turn (the light was green), from my peripheral vision I could see a SUV speeding towards our vehicle. 

I'm not sure if the SUV was running a red light, the driver was distracted, or if just hitting another car for some reason was the driver's intent. 

It really felt like time slowed down in the few seconds prior to the accident. I remember thinking I would feel the biggest impact and would probably die because of it since it was coming directly towards my side of the vehicle. 

I was 21 or so and began having strange palpitations in my chest, my shoulders, arms, and chest would go between ache and throb. I would panic from the symptoms and that would just make everything worse.   

One night things were especially terrible and I started contemplating actually getting myself to the doctor. While I was sitting around brooding about, my neck ‘popped’ on both sides (basically my trapezius muscles on both sides.  

It was a strange feeling that I really can’t quite explain). That was it! No more of this! I’m not going to be the 21 year old that dies from a heart attack!

Got my roommate to drive me to the ER at 2-3AM. Got a full battery of tests which turned up...nothing. They told me aside from being a smoker, I was completely healthy - and it was most likely a string of panic/anxiety attacks. (Which is strange because I’m actually very even keeled and I handle stress fairly well).  

Things cleared up shortly after that. Of course.

20 years later and I still don’t know what was truly wrong with me. I’m certain the panic/anxiety was a product of the slightly alarming things my body was doing (which, again...made them worse).   

A few years ago I was out drinking for a friend's Bachelorette party. I knew I was too drunk to drive, so I called my then-boyfriend for a ride. As I was hanging up the phone, I thought to myself that I should ask him to drive his car instead of his motorcycle, but I didn't say anything. 

On the way home, we were side swiped by a drunk driver in a suburban area. The front wheel of the motorcycle got caught in the wheel well and she dragged us down the street for about a block and a half. 

One time I did one of those walks on the ocean floor with a helmet that feeds up to the surface for air. The helmet creates this air bubble; it's not like a breather for diving. 

There were two officials leading our group around this railing they installed on the ocean floor. One was leading and picking up small animals we could play with while the other was swimming around us and taking pics on his GoPro. The guy leading us does this trick where he jumps up and walks on the railing which I thought was pretty sweet. 

At this point I’m last in the group and decide to copy our highly trained instructor. I proceed to jump and miss the railing on my way down, the helmet tips and starts filling with water. 

I work in a casino located in a pretty small city. We're dead a lot, so I often find myself twiddling my thumbs and waiting for something to do. As a dealer, I'm often just stuck in one spot.

I kept seeing this older guy walking past my table, and he was pretty obviously trying to keep himself hidden. A young lady was playing a slot machine, and he seemed to be watching her. He would move away, walk around for a minute, and then come back and watch her some more.

It freaked me out. I had a really bad feeling about what his intentions were. I called my pit boss over, who also had nothing to do, and we watched him for a few minutes as he lurked around.

Ten years ago I was walking home from college. Finals week, and being a graphic design major my bag is full of projects and supplies to work on at home.

I'm at the intersection of two very quiet streets two blocks from my apartment. I see a car doing ~30mph coming my direction. Two guys are in the car which is a new Chrysler with huge flashy rims and tinted windows.  

It was not what I'm used to seeing around campus at all, most students are driving bikes or old Hondas. It honestly looked like a stereotypical dealer's car.  

I see the driver's head bend to look at me through the tint as they drove past.  

Red flag #1, so I turn off my music, take out my ear buds and start paying attention to what's going on.

Another student is crossing the street and I'm turning the corner to walk to my apartment. The Chrysler starts to brake, one guy hops out and kind of stands in the street looking around like he's searching for something.  

Red flag #2. He's the jump out boy and lookout, the other guy, the driver, must be "the muscle."

The other student is still walking so she's not in danger, but the jumpout boy is just standing there in lookout mode.